1. Technical Field
An embodiment of this invention relates to the field of data transfer between a server and a client and, more specifically, to a system, method, and apparatus for using an intermediate driver to allow an InfiniBand™ server to transfer data with an Ethernet client, where the intermediate driver provides a “fail over” function to improve system performance.
2. Description of the Related Arts
Computers in a network often communicate and transfer data with each other. A “client” computer can request data from a “server” computer, and the server can transfer the requested data to the client. In a large network, there can be many client computers transferring data with a single server.
A problem arises when a server is transferring data to a client, and a Network Interface Card (NIC) at the server malfunctions. In such a situation, the entire connection between the server and the rest of the clients coupled to the server is disrupted. The problem is magnified when the server utilizes a more efficient and high speed Input/Output (I/O) technique, such as Infiniband I/O architecture.
InfiniBand™, release 1.0.a, published Jul. 19, 2001, is a technology developed by a consortium of companies, the Infiniband Trade Association, in the computer industry. It provides a way to move information among the components of a computer system and among computers. InfiniBand enables computer CPUs to communicate directly with I/O devices and other CPUs with very high performance. The technology is defined in an open industry specification.
InfiniBand provides a modular performance hierarchy that is faster than other standards-based I/O mechanisms currently in use. InfiniBand is considered the eventual successor to the peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus, which has become a bottleneck to new and high speed CPUs and a source of reliability problems.
When a server is utilizing Infiniband to transfer data to a client utilizing an Ethernet IEEE 802.3, published 1985, a faulty link on the Ethernet side of the network cannot be directly communicated to the Infiniband host because the Infiniband host has a different I/O architecture and utilizes packets having a format that is not directly compatible with Ethernet.
Infiniband technology is targeted for the back end of a data center of any network. On the front end and in the middle end of the network infrastructure, legacy Ethernet technology prevails. In other words, Infiniband and Ethernet technology can co-exist in a given network. To achieve data transfer between two heterogeneous systems, a form of conversion device or a bridge device is necessary. Such a bridge, often called an “Infiniband-Ethernet” bridge, converts Infiniband packets into Ethernet packets, and vice-versa. Some present systems provide such a conversion but lack a “fail-over” capability. Fail-over is a function utilized to maintain a connection for a data transfer. In a device having a fail-over feature, there are typically two or more data input paths and two or more data output paths. When there is an error in one of the data input or output paths, a separate idle input or output path is used in place of the failed input or output path, therefore maintaining the connection so that data can transfer.
A fail-over feature hence provides undisrupted network connection. Current systems are therefore deficient because they do not provide a fail-over feature for Infiniband-Ethernet bridges.